"My Year In Iraq" by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III with Malcolm McConnell

My Year in Iraq

The subtitle is The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope. Paul Bremer was the guy President G.W. Bush picked to head up the reconstruction of Iraq after the 2nd Gulf war. Not a very good book. I picked it up in a dollar store (for a dollar). Oscillates from daily life to technical details to statistics of the economic situation in Iraq, which was dire. I read the first four chapters and the picture he paints of the situation in Iraq is kind of amazing. The whole country was like an old car in the Midwest that has been patched up with Bondo and paint to make it look nice. It might look good on the outside, but underneath, where it counts, the whole thing is corroded and rotten. Saddam and his cronies had been looting the country for years, no investment in maintenance of the infrastructure much less in any new facilities. Everything, water plants, sewer plants, power plants, oil refineries, was on the brink of collapse. No wonder it has taken so long to get their economy restarted. No wonder the fighting was over so quickly. If we had waited any longer they probably would not have been able to send anybody out to meet the Infidel Invaders, must less put up any resistance. I gave up on the book because it got to be tedious. Meeting piled on crisis piled on meeting. Got old pretty quickly.

Update January 2017 replaced missing image.